Final Eight At Big One For One Drop Tournament

After its first and second day run, the final table is set for the world’s first $1 million buy-in tournament with Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Hellmuth leading the pack. Those privileged to be in the final table will be beating each other for the $18.3 million first-place prize.

Joining them at the final table are Sam Trickett, Bobby Baldwin, Brian Rast, David Einhorn, Richard Yong and Guy Laliberte. Esfandiari leads them with a total of 39,925,000 chips. Sam Trickett follows second with 37,000,000 chips. Guy Laliberte ranks third with 21,700,000 chips and Brian Rast falling behind with 11,350,000, which puts him on the fourth spot.

Phil Hellmuth has 10,925,000 chips with him and ranked 5th in the stack up. Davin Einhorn falls in the 6th place with 8,375,000 chips while Richard Yong has 7,475,000 chips and ranks him at 7th place. Completing the stack up is Bobby Baldwin with 7,150,000 chips.

The room where the Big One for One Drop was played was packed with people. Tournament started with 37 people on Day 2 and slowly dwindled until they reached only eight people. Pros occupied the top ranks on the stack up while the last three spots were occupied by the amateurs/businessmen, Einhorn, Yong and Baldwin.

So, the final table will be equally divided into pros and businessmen. The pros are cheered on by the rest of the poker community while the businessmen got pulled in a by number of charities. Einhorn has pledged 100% of his winnings to the City Year charity. Everyone also assumes that Guy Laliberte will be giving his score to One Drop.

There’s a large payout for whoever wins first place. First place winner will receive $18,346,673 cash, while whoever places second will receive $10,112,001. Third place winner will get $4,352,000 and the fourth placer wins $2,645,333. Whoever wins fifth place will get $1,834,666.

Mike Sexton, one of the greatest poker players in history, lost the chance at the final table and bowed out in ninth place. He was still able to take home $1.1 million. Sexton said in an interview, “At the dinner break I was dead last in chips and I had a little rush of cards to make the final nine and cash so all in all I have to be happy with hat result,”

He added that he would have wanted a shot at the first prize money. It would have been good for poker if Sexton had gotten to the final table, says Sexton. But he concedes that it was not meant to be. In the ninth, he went broke when he lost to Antonio Esfandiari.

Twenty Players at the One Drop event went broke on Day 2. There were 37 of them, but only eight came through. Games came and went in breakneck pace. Eliminations and all-ins came one right after the other. Several pros who were in the game and whom many had thought would make it through, were the first ones to leave the table.

First ones to leave the table were Chamath Palihapitiya, Vivek Rajkumar, Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond and Negreanu. Dwan and Negreanu left in the same hand against Mikhail Smirnov. Gus Hansen, who won himself a satellite seat at the $25k Mega Satellite event went broke against Philipp Gruissem. Ben Lamb and Phil Ivey also busted the table after Hansen. Haralabos Voulgaris left on the 17th hand and lost to Laliberte. Tom Marchese got cut off by Esfandiari at 13th. Others who did not make it were Brandon Steven, Gruiseem and Ilya Bulychev.